Smart cards are small, usually plastic, cards with integrated circuits. The cards are useful for personal identification, authenticating a user, and other such applications. In many large organizations, smart cards can be used for entry control, resource tracking, and other applications. Smart card technology has become increasingly popular as integrated circuitry improves, and the field of potential applications has expanded.
In most current applications, the total number of smart card readers is directly proportional to the total number of devices. That is to say, each device that requires authentication via smart card technology requires a smart card reader. If there are 10 devices in an organization, and they use smart card authentication, each device needs a separate smart card reader on it, and separately authenticates a user at the device. This is both expensive and inefficient.
Accordingly, a need in the art exists for improved systems and methods for distributed smart card readers for authentication of distributed devices such as multifunction devices as described herein.